


Mantle

by svecounia



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 13:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4480745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svecounia/pseuds/svecounia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toast drives the Gigahorse through the mountain pass towards the Citadel, her dead captor in the driver's seat and her foot on the accelerator. Her tangle of emotions churns into anger, which finds an undeserving target in Capable. Furiosa gives her reason to redirect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mantle

She drove for hours. Long enough to watch the sun crawl closer to the horizon and, at last, long enough to convince herself that what had started as the tiniest pinpricks in the blank space of the wasteland were indeed the three spires of the Citadel. They jutted violently out of the ground like nails pushed too far through the other side of a wall, and every growing centimeter was another hammer to her gut. Toast tried not to feel sick. It was a tall order, given that she was fucking draped over her captor’s stiffening, rancid, diseased, and newly half-faced body, but she wasn't about to crumble now.

All attention was targeted at Furiosa the moment the passage collapsed, and rightfully so. If Furiosa died because of him, even hell wouldn’t be a refuge for him. Toast would personally wrench his soul back to repeat the job over and over and over, and if she hadn’t been so terrified that even a single moment’s pause might reveal a motorbike still in pursuit, she’d have stopped the Gigahorse and kicked him into the dirt where he fucking belonged. Her loathing burned hot enough to scald; she couldn’t stand to look down at his body, but if she had, she would have been disappointed to see that his armor wasn’t melting under the heat of her hatred, bubbling and blistering like the skin beneath.

Miles out, they finally moved him. Erika jumped out to help the Fool, but the massive corpse was too heavy on her old bones. Toast helped instead, her jaw tight, muscles straining, and when Cheedo got that fiery blaze in her eyes that Toast had seen more in the past two days than cumulatively in the past two years, she snapped at Cheedo to stay put. Guilt burned, but she swallowed it back like bile. Cheedo was still Cheedo. There was enough in her that Toast still wanted to protect. 

Cheedo didn’t listen, of course, because Cheedo never listened to anyone anymore. One arm for each of them, and the Fool with both of Joe’s legs, they chucked him in the back like a sack of rotted produce. “Move him again when we get closer,” the Fool mumbled. 

Erika offered to drive. Toast refused before Erika could even finish. She kept her back to the proceedings in the rear, she had to have a purpose, even if it meant just sitting there with her foot on the accelerator, glaring at the horizon and daring it to test her further. Her mind refused to focus and her ears filtered out most conversation, leaving only only the most useless, aggravating details. The shifting sand of the wasteland beneath the Gigahorse's tires. Rips and popping springs as what bare comforts in the vehicle were ripped up to create a makeshift bed for Furiosa. “Deathbed, you mean,” Dag might have said if any of them had dared speak, if it meant anyone but Furiosa. 

Capable was still crying a bit. Toast could tell because Capable always stopped breathing when she was crying so no one would hear the wetness in it. That kind of stubbornness looked stupid and proud on Toast; Capable made it look unselfish, and it was. Everyone spoke in hushed voices, Erika had said something about a collapsed lung and abruptly Toast tuned back out, refusing to think about that now, but she couldn’t filter out Capable’s silence. Crying for a War Boy. Toast’s hardened weariness grappled with bitter, uninvited disdain. 

“Enough.” Erika’s hand on her arm, then on the wheel again. “Enough now. Be with her.” Toast drew a hissing breath, teeth bared to insist she had more in her, but the gravity in the old Vuvalini’s face halted her. This was a woman who seemed like she’d seen more deaths than Toast had seen days, and an insistent nod from her sent Toast scrambling back to the others. 

Furiosa’s head was cradled in the Fool’s arms, one of her hands clutched tightly in Dag’s. Beside Toast, Capable’s shoulders were still too stiff to be normal – for fuck’s sake, if Capable transitioned straight from crying over the War Boy to Furiosa, Toast was sure she would snap. _“They aren’t the same value!”_ she wanted to snarl loudly enough that she couldn’t hear the dreadful rasp that was clawing up from Furiosa's throat. _“He was useful, but he wasn’t_ her. _He wasn’t Furiosa and he wasn’t Angharad, he was a_ tool, _he was_ helpful, _he wasn’t your_ sister, _he was a pet, he was no one!”_ If anyone was supposed to be Angharad now, it was Capable, and here she was taking a single breath about once every ten fucking seconds to keep people from noticing what she was already making abundantly clear. 

Toast’s simmer was abruptly cut when Furiosa’s rasp changed to a croak, and the Fool leaned closer to listen. 

“Get them home.”

Toast felt her heart freeze over. Anger’s heat cooled to a dull throb, sealed over, the tiny molten core beneath the earth’s hardened, damaged crust. _This_ was commitment, _this_ was legacy. She would live for this if Furiosa could not. She would endure an unjust world in Furiosa’s stead. She could never pursue whatever treasured, unknowable pleasure Capable had found in the arms of the War Boy, and she could never love so freely as to hope to fill Angharad’s shoes. Perhaps it was not so small a coincidence that the two came so easily to Capable, hand in hand. 

Too many miles and hours to count later, the platform rose. Dag clutched the bag of seeds, and Cheedo was helping others up with surprising strength. Below, the fool called Max was weaving away through the crush of the crowd. Capable’s shoulders were relaxed now, her chin lifted, proud, and for a moment, in the sunlight filtered by the spray of gushing water, her hair seemed to burn more golden than red. Toast turned from her, taking her place forward. Whatever intricacies and secrets her sisters held, whatever her own strengths and shortcomings, she would stand guard to protect them, her sisters at her back.


End file.
